I finally got a chance to see And Now… Ladies and Gentlemen Saturday night. I’ve been waiting over a year for this movie to make it to the States and it finally has. It stars Jeremy Irons who is wonderful as master jewel thief Valentin. The scenery is beautiful; it was filmed in France and Morocco, and the story is also quite good. But the main reason I wanted to see it was the debut performance of my favorite French chanteuse, Patricia Kaas. She played a lounge singer (surprise!) who ends up in Morroco and meets Valentin. She sings through a great deal of the film, which was wonderful, but quite a bit of it was in English. While she sounds lovely in any language, I much prefer it when she sings in French. The deal is that they are both suffering from blackouts and Valentin has the added bonus of migraine headaches. They are pulled together by the careless tongue of the Morroccan doctor who mentions to Valentin that the singer at the local hotel has the same problems as he. Valentin heads to the hotel to see her, and witnesses her having one of her blackouts. She walks out of the hotel and ends up in a dark alleyway. Two thugs attempt to mug her, but Valentin is there to save the day. She ends up returning the favor the following day when Valentin is accused of a robbery in the hotel. This is the beginning of their relationship that will continue through the rest of the film as they head for Lalla Chalia’s grave; supposedly Lalla can heal people from “the other side.” I won’t give away what happens…

Anyway, I really enjoyed the film. There are sad moments and funny moments (Jeremy Irons dons several disguises during his various robberies) and then there’s all the lovely singing. I highly recommend this film, if it’s anywhere near you. It probably won’t be, but you can always watch for it on DVD. I had to drive 40 miles in to “the Big City” (Atlanta) at 9:40 PM Sunday night to see it at the Landmark Midtown Cinema. I generally don’t like going into the city, but I occasionally head to the Red Light Cafe to see Glenn Phillips, which is about a block away, so it wasn’t that bad.